


Conscience and cowardice

by Fantasio



Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 16:31:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5463425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasio/pseuds/Fantasio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lord Henry always had his favourites.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conscience and cowardice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mikkey_bones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkey_bones/gifts).



_Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all._ -

 _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ , Oscar Wilde.

 

Basil Hallward was an artist. Or at least, that's what he liked to think he was, what he wished he was. That was what his aristocratic friends liked to laugh about, asking him when he would finally show them his fortune, that they imagined to be tremendous, hard won through his masterpieces. Basil did not have any money, but he paid them no mind. Basil was always so damnably nice to everyone; and especially kind to anyone that did not deserve it.

One intoxicated night, taking advantage of something the painter had said in confidence, they had asked if he really put his heart on canvas? Or did he ever used other parts of himself there, as well? They had then winked at each other, in a rather undignified fashion, or so Basil thought. Everybody knew about his feelings, about his love and lust for Dorian Gray. Not only that, but everybody knew of his undying desire for everything young, beautiful and male. How he looked at his proud, rich models. While they posed for him for posterity, for glory, to have one painting to hang in their drawings rooms, he painted them with all of his forbidden, powerful desires struggling inside of his heart and mind and body. Those young men that would become rich, influential diplomats, what did they think of him? Would they even remember him?

That's what Basil thought about, as he dressed up to go out into the dark, cloudy London night. The wind, that had been growing strong all through the afternoon, was now quickly turning into a menacing howl, waiting for the painter to outside to swallow him whole. But Hallward did not care. He had important things to attend to, in the darkest of night.

Basil Hallward had had a lot of models, and he had seen a lot of beautiful, rich young men. But the memory of one stayed particularly strong with him, shining like a gilded carving in his mind. Though he had not been the most beautiful of them all, he was the one, after Dorian, to have touched Basil's mind in the strongest way.

His name was... Igor? Ivan? Was it Ivan? Yes, it must have been. Basil, all intoxicated that he was by the young man's magnetic charm, had not made a note of his name. He remembered how different and romantic it sounded. Basil had supposed the young man to be no more than twenty-years old, and had been surprised when Ivan had told him he was already twenty-four. He had curly black hair, his eyes a vague shade of liquid grey, soft and a little scared. He was timid, looked slightly weak. But the young man clearly wanted to be taken seriously. Something very proud and defensive was in his eyes. He behaved as a young gentleman should behave, taking on a sophisticated voice to greet Basil. Then, the youth in him always seemed to take over his grown-up act, and he talked softly of spring, flowers, new buildings and pretty London things to Basil, who half-listened and half-painted, a smile on his lips and peace singing in his heart.

Ivan had been beautiful, truly beautiful; though in a much more subdued way than someone such as Dorian was. Dorian, who had always shone like the coldest sun to Basil.

Ivan had been somber and fragile, and extremely hard to paint, as the young man was often shuddering and did not seem to be able to keep still, even the warmest rooms. _He_ had been like the tender moon that kept Basil from painting during the early winter nights. Frustrating and distant like her, but so comforting and kind.

Afterwards, as Basil had painstakingly achieved something vaguely resembling a painting, Ivan had paid the artist and left, promising to see Basil again. They never did. Basil, always understanding, knew in his heart that Ivan's absence could not come from a desire to avoid him. His friends laughed at him once again, but he knew. They were always laughing at something, anyway.

  
Basil could not understand the idleness of aristocracy. He never had. The seemingly permanent joy his wealthy friends felt at joking at his expense was a mystery to him. Lord Henry was probably the only aristocrat he had ever trusted. And was not it extremely ironic, Basil thought, that his lord favourite would be, for all probability, the worst of them all?

  
Harry and his ilk liked to live in a strange and rather chaotic way, or at least that what it seemed to Basil. Their whole existence revolved around sudden bursts of passionate energy that they quickly spent on ephemeral desires, all of it shamefully fading before the sun would even rise again the next morning. Basil could never live such an eventful life; the sheer emotion of it would probably destroy him and send all of his senses in such a disarray that he would probably never paint again.  
How did events even unfold within their minds, within their consciousness? Did the tragedies of this world go unheard and unseen by them, those idles aristocrats? Did the burden of responsibility, of guilt, of despair, that Basil Hallward felt so frequently, leave Henry and his friends unharmed and free? Basil always felt like everything he did would create consequences se devastating that he could not bring himself to do anything . Heartless? Were they? Was he, he the painter, he the artist, for only thinking about his art and his heart?

  
But Lord Henry... Basil knew a lot about him. He knew about the haughty lord's heart. His truth was not to be found during those sordid evenings, inside those empty rooms, devoid of warmth and humanity. Henry, or Harry, as Basil liked to call him once, was more than the gilded rags he wore as moral clothing. Basil knew.

  
He knew from hidden things, private things, that Lord Henry would never have let the world see. The things they had shared, and how, and when, Harry never talked about them. Sometimes, Basil even wondered if his friend had forgotten all about it-but he knew he did not-, wondered if it had ever happened at all. Was it to please Harry, in a new step in Basil's never-ending quest to satisfy his friends, that the artist sometimes nearly forgot himself? Some things were probably best kept in the dark, behind locked rooms, in dusty attics. Where no civilized soul would see or be shocked by the awful and blinding truth. Yes, Basil Hallward himself had best to forget those things himself. The things that existed, happened, shone for a brief instant between Harry and him, were not worth the pain of remembering them, alone.

Only during nights such as this one, while the wind seemed to bend the house over, when the rain poured all over London, when the night seemed to be never-ending, Basil could remember.

  
He remembered how he had first met Henry. He was at a funeral. Walking aimlessly down a muddy path in the old cemetery, he had seen a gentleman of about thirty-five, looking extremely distraught. It was raining slightly, and his coat was wet with a myriad of tiny drops. But the man did not seem to care. He was looking, fixedly, at the casket in front of him. It was black and dripping with rain, as if shining darkly one last time behind its curtain of raindrops before being pulled down in the open grave next to it.

  
“Terrible”, Basil heard him say as he approached the man, “unimaginable. Intolerable, vulgar!”

  
Standing closer to him, Basil could see how very refined in his black clothes the man looked. He was shaking, swaying slightly on his feet while talking to himself. He looked hypnotized, entranced by the sorrow of the atmosphere all around him. Afterwards, Basil could not remember ever seeing Harry in such a state again, even in his worst opium states. His looks, even in that frazzled state, were handsome. Basil remembered thinking confusedly how much this stranger looked like Ivan; only less luminous, older, more rugged, cold.

  
The man that Basil would soon know as Lord Henry turned suddenly and saw Basil. He looked at the artist without saying anything. Basil broke the stunned silence that followed and asked if the young man had been well-loved, perhaps?

The man started and turned back to look at the grave and at the name already engraved in the tombstone.

Ivan Wotton. 

"He was. Oh, he was. My youngest brother. He truly, truly was, sir." 

Then, in front of Basil Hallward, Lord Henry Wotton started sobbing. All sense of dignity lost to the heaviness of the pain he felt, he fell to his knees in the miserable, dark grass.

  
Seeing how distraught he was, Basil had then offered that both paid for a brougham together after the funeral, explaining to him the connection he had to his younger brother. Basil was rarely that straightforward, that fearless when it came to men he was attracted to. Most of the time, the painter simply decided to avoid them, making sure none of them really knew about his overflowing, and perhaps-as this was always a risk- misplaced admiration for them. But with Lord Henry, something had been, in essence, different. The way the man stood, all pain and sorrow and wretched dignity. The lack of judgement for Basil's simpler clothes, for his simpler manners. Perhaps Henry would have been very different, had they met in equally different circumstances. But on that day, it did not matter in the slightest to Basil. Something in the sight of the young Lord had touched his soul.

 

In the carriage, Lord Henry immediately told him that he should call him Harry from now on. His hand resting gently next to Basil's, he told him how Ivan had died shortly after Basil had painted his portrait-"Did you realise how weak he already was? Was he not trembling all the time? Oh Basil, did you think this was only poetic fragility?-and how he had passed away due to pneumonia. This had been a surprise, Lord Henry said to Basil. Everybody thought he would rather succumb to the family heart disease that had already taken his other younger brother when he was six, and Harry was eight. Harry inherited it too-"I must make due for this weakness and be as cold-hearted as possible"-. Seeing how flimsy life was, how quickly its tantrums took away loved ones, Harry resolved never to love again. Life, to him, had to be lived to the fullest, and in the most guarded way possible. 

(Later, Basil would think of the many young men's minds that Harry had poisoned, and their conversation in the brougham would sound sinister to his ears.)

  
The night they then spent at the painter's home was as intense as it was dreadful. Their lovemaking, strange even in its very existence, was good, deep, truthful. Basil Hallward knew who the Lord was then, looking into Henry's eyes, in the way his body plunged into his. He intimately knew how Lord Henry believed every single word he then said to him, calling the painter 'lovely, beautiful, good', and he also knew that his panting, his moans weren't for show. When Lord Henry cried later that night, awakened by the sordid reality of death from the dream he had, sleeping into Basil's arms, the painter also knew every single one of Harry's tear was true.

  
They met several times afterwards, in a similar fashion. Harry made sweet and distant love to him. Harry told him that he liked his intellectual expression, even though it was not an artistic expression in the slightest. Harry told him how much he loved the way he tilted back his head when he laughed. Harry told him how he liked his values, this time his tone too indifferent for Basil to even distinguish truth from irony. Lord Henry told him a lot of things. Then Harry would slowly kiss the painter's neck as he laughed at his lies, and everything would be forgotten.

One morning, as they were walking in Basil's garden, Lord Henry had suddenly exclaimed, in quite a nonchalant fashion:

"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."

Basil, looking up at him fixedly, saw how Lord Henry, catching his eyes, turned pale and quickly changed the subject.

Their intimate relationship ended some times afterwards; Harry, with Dorian now in the picture, slowly grew distant from Basil. Hallward, feeling less and less inclined to laugh and humor Henry's increasingly cruel moods and fancy, showed only indifference in public at any mention of their separation. "Only for the better", he would said. "We weren't suited at all, Harry and me". But secretly, Basil suffered heavily for the loss of his friend.

But then, why should it matter? It did not matter at all, losing Harry. What would it have changed, were the young Lord still by his side? Nothing, it would have changed nothing in the slightest. After all, they never were friends, really. Much more than an acquaintance, much less than a friend, Basil had been to Lord Henry. Almost never a lover.

Many years later, while they embraced to say goodbye after an evening out-they were still physically affectionate towards each other at the time-Harry had nonchalently murmured to Basil's ear: "Don't you find it remarkable, dearest Basil, how Dorian looks like Ivan? Perhaps I am merely looking for him in every man I know and love".

Basil had then had to resist the violent urge to kiss Henry, a full kiss like before, so that he would keep quiet and finally stop loving everyone. If only it had just been them three, Basil, Henry and Ivan, forever and more. Death, then Dorian, had broken that invisible link that had created the strange kind of peace that Basil now craved. How desolate his life seemed now.

As he reminisced, Basil Hallward bitterly thought of how much he missed Henry. Both of their obsessions with Dorian had kept them apart from their former friendship. But perhaps that bond could be rekindled?

Why did all those thoughts suddenly come to him on that particular night? Was it the apprehension he felt now, as he prepared to go and meet Dorian, the friend he was starting to loose, exactly as he had lost Henry? Was it the nervousness he felt, as he was about to ask Dorian to finally see the painting Basil had done of him, all those years ago?

After that, why not see Harry again? He would have all the time in the world.

Basil Hallward stepped out into the street, and closed his door. Looking up in the sky, he thought he could see the moon, shining down so coldly and calmly on him. Was it Ivan, coming to say goodbye at long last? But why tonight, in the darkest day of the year, while the night was alive with memories?

Walking faster, Basil buttoned up his coat, and, steeling himself against the wind, took his last walk, lulled by familiar stars, into the infinite canvas of the sky.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide, mikkey_bones! :) Your prompts were everything I wanted and needed when I nominated Lord Henry and Basil Hallward. I have been wondering about their relationship a lot lately, and this story was my way of making both of them justice. Of course, my writing pales next to Oscar's beautiful words, especially as English is not my native language. But I hope you were still able to enjoy this for what it was :)


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